Thousands of right wing users have been banned from Twitter, following Parag Agrawal’s appointment as CEO – many of them looking for a new home have fled to Gab, the free speech-based alternative.
On Monday evening, a mass ban occurred of mostly anonymous right wing Twitter accounts, with many of them being connected to the America First sphere of Twitter, including American Populist Union’s Vince Dao, and the news outlet Media Right News.
Many of those users informed National File that they were banned for allegedly violating Twitter rules regarding “platform manipulation and spam.”
https://twitter.com/GabeGuidarini/status/1468057687829143558
.@MediaRightNews1 has been suspended! Follow them on Telegram: https://t.co/M6O51FCydk pic.twitter.com/RXShhUdZ83
— Wendy Rogers (@WendyRogersAZ) December 7, 2021
Breitbart’s Allum Bokhari, author of #DELETED, one of the most prominent books studying the phenomenon of Big Tech censorship, suggested that the ban wave happened due to “some kind of new banning algorithm” being deployed by Twitter, “probably using network analysis to suppress an entire cluster at once.”
Bokhari noted that accounts that never even tweeted were banned, adding credence to the theory that “this purge is based on who you follow, not what you’ve tweeted.”
Sources reporting that accounts they’ve never even tweeted from have been banned. Suggests this purge is based on who you follow, not what you’ve tweeted.
Censorship via network analysis.
Wrote about this at length in #DELETED — it’s how they suppress whole movements at once.— Allum Bokhari (@AllumBokhari) December 7, 2021
Unsurprisingly, many of those who were banned from Twitter decided to seek alternatives, most notably Gab.
Andrew Torba, the CEO and founder of Gab, tweeted that the site was getting “thousands of new sign ups per hour” after the ban wave. “When Twitter purges, Gab surges.”
https://twitter.com/getongab/status/1468087344385470465
In a further Gab post, Torba warned people who may wish to get back on Twitter that because the bannings were about “taking about entire network node of people at once,” people should not go back to Twitter, but stay on Gab and build new networks.
“We can’t afford what happened today to happen again during an election season,” Torba added.
Representative Paul Gosar, one of the most America First members of Congress, recently joined Gab, where he swiftly became one of the most followed accounts on the platform.
Responding to National File’s Jack Hadfield on Twitter, Gosar told his followers to “go to Gab,” adding in a subsequent tweet that the Alt Tech platform was not “afraid of diverse viewpoints” like thsoe running Twitter.
Go to Gab. https://t.co/OFd8ybTBrr
— Paul Gosar (@DrPaulGosar) December 7, 2021
Other platforms like @getongab aren’t afraid of diverse viewpoints. https://t.co/9tBKegW9Fl
— Paul Gosar (@DrPaulGosar) December 7, 2021
The ban wave took place not long after Parag Agrawal was appointed as the new CEO of Twitter, replacing Jack Dorsey. Following his appointment, it was discovered that the former Chief Technology Officer had previously claimed that Twitter should not “focus on free speech,” follows a Soros-funded anti-free speech organization, and also has liked tweets that compare conservatives to ISIS, suggest people give money to BLM rioters, and liken COVID arguments to a “religious war.”
A seemingly “accidental” ban wave also occurred last week, after Twitter announced that they were expanding their “private information policy,” designed to stop people from being doxed on Twitter, to also include photos and videos that are posted of “private individuals” without their consent.
While the rule seemed to be designed to protect those on the left from being exposed by conservatives, radical antifa and leftist journalists were suspended en masse, with those on the right reporting accounts that doxed conservatives. They were shortly reinstated.
National File has reached out to Twitter for comment regarding the mass suspensions and has not received a response in time for publication.
